HSE International ISSUE 92 | Page 12

TRANSPORT & LOGISTICS: CROSSRAIL “This project will bring an estimated £42 billion worth of benefit to London and UK economy through regeneration and investment” keeping everyone healthy and safe. The Target Zero principles are: •We all have the right to go home unharmed every day •We believe that all harm is preventable •We must all work together to achieve this Hails describes how these principles affect him, his team and Crossrail contractors, “When I arrived in 2012, I was in the fortunate position that these expectations had already been set and many of the principal contracts had already been awarded.” “It is important to explain the ethos of Target Zero. It is regarded as a State of Mind. We aspire to prevent all harm, both health and safety, and we have a firm belief that all harm is preventable. How we achieve that is vitally important. We have to collaborate and work with our tier one contractors to understand what the challenges are from their risk profiles, how they intend to meet those challenges, and how they intend to manage that risk. By looking collectively at innovative means of addressing that risk, we hope to eliminate harm.” “While that’s a very aspirational thing to say in the construction industry, it is something we firmly believe in and we expect our contractors to believe in it also.” “The minimum health and safety requirements for Crossrail were formulated on the back of the 2012 Olympics. We took the lessons learned from their program and that became our minimum expectation. We then enhanced that benchmark, raising the bar higher for Crossrail contracts. One of those requirements was that contractors must have strong management systems in place, as you would expect from big multi-national companies that were expected to deliver Europe’s largest construction project.” T he Crossrail route will link existing Network Rail services, from east to west, through 42 kilometres of tunnels and new underground